Your customers speak five languages. Your site speaks one.

Walk down Brighton Beach Avenue and count the languages on the signs. Russian, Georgian, Ukrainian, Spanish, English, sometimes all on one storefront. The signs learned this decades ago: a customer who can read your window walks in, and one who can't walks past. Websites still haven't learned it. Most local business sites around New York speak English only, in neighborhoods where the customers don't. This guide shows you how to find out which languages your business actually needs, what a multilingual site has to do to work, how to get it translated without embarrassing yourself, and a worked example of what it's worth.

What an English-only site says to a Russian speaker

When someone whose first language is Russian, or Spanish, or Georgian searches for a dentist and lands on a page they have to work to read, they don't think "how inconvenient". They think "this place isn't for me". They've spent the whole day translating in their head; your site shouldn't be one more place they have to. They close it and find the office with the sign in their language, even if it's farther away and more expensive.

The reverse is also true, and stronger. A customer who reads your prices, your services, and a line about who you are in their own language trusts you before they ever call. They already know you'll understand them on the phone. They know they can bring their mother. The site did the reassuring, so the call is short.

There's a search side too. Google shows pages to people in the language they search in. If someone types the Russian words for "car inspection Brooklyn", English-only pages mostly don't show up. A properly built Russian page does, and the competitor on the next block with an English-only site never even sees that customer. Translated pages are a way to appear in searches your competitors don't know are happening.

Find out which languages you actually need

Don't guess, and don't translate into every language you can think of. Count. One week of paying attention tells you more than any census table.

1. Put a tally sheet by the register with six columns: English, Spanish, Russian, Georgian, Ukrainian, and "other". For one week, every time a customer speaks to you or your staff in a language, or asks whether you speak one, make a mark.
2. Listen to the phone. Add a mark for every call where the caller's first language isn't English, whether or not they switched.
3. Look at your Google Business Profile. Open the reviews and count how many are written in another language. Open the Q&A and look at the questions.
4. Walk your block. Count the storefront signs in each language within two blocks. Those owners already did the research.
5. Add it up. Any language with more than about one customer in ten is a language your site needs. Any language you or a staff member can speak is worth listing even if the count is low, because it's a promise you can keep.

Two rules come out of the count. Only offer a language you can serve: if nobody in the shop speaks Georgian, a Georgian page brings in customers you'll then disappoint on the phone. And say who speaks what, on the site and on the Google profile. "We speak English, Spanish, and Russian" is the most reassuring sentence a local business can write.

A customer who can read your window walks in. One who can't walks past.

What a multilingual site has to do to work

There's a cheap version and a real version, and customers can tell them apart in seconds.

The cheap version is a "translate this page" widget that runs the English through a machine on the fly. The words are often wrong, the menu buttons stay in English, the prices and phone number sometimes break, and Google doesn't index the result, so nobody finds it by searching. It's better than nothing by a hair.

The real version has these parts:

• A separate page for each language, at its own address. English at yoursite.com, Spanish at yoursite.com/es/, Russian at yoursite.com/ru/, and so on. Google can index each one and show it to the right searcher.
• A language switch at the top of every page, with each language written in its own name: "Español", "Русский", "ქართული", "Українська". A flag alone isn't enough, because a flag is a country and Spanish is spoken in twenty of them. A flag can sit next to the word where it reads clearly; the word has to be there.
• Everything translated, not just the homepage: services, prices, hours, the booking form, the button labels, the thank-you message after someone submits a form, the error message when they forget their phone number.
• The same facts on every version. Same prices, same hours, same phone number. If the Russian page says $35 and the English page says $40, you've created a problem you'll have to explain at the register.
• A small technical tag on each page telling Google which language it's in and where the other versions live. Your web person will know it as hreflang. You don't need to understand it; you need to ask whether it's there.
• The languages spoken in the shop, stated in a plain sentence, in every language version.

If you have an existing site, ask whoever maintains it for those six things by name. A site that has them is properly multilingual. A site with a widget isn't.

How to get it translated properly

Machine translation has become good, and we use it: AI does the first pass on every site we build, and that's part of why fourteen languages don't cost fourteen times as much. But a first pass is a draft. The problems are always in the same places, so here's the process.

1. Freeze the English first. Every change to the English has to be made in every other language too, so finish the English before translating anything.
2. Make a list of words that shouldn't be translated. Your business name, brand names, product names, street names, and any service name your customers already use in English. "Fade" is "fade" in every language on the block.
3. Translate the whole page, including button text, form labels, and the page title that shows in the browser tab.
4. Check the numbers by eye. Prices, phone numbers, hours, the address. Machines occasionally change a comma to a period or drop a digit. Read every number in every language against the English.
5. Get a native speaker to read it. This is the step nobody skips twice. One customer, one relative, one neighbor who grew up speaking the language. Ask them to read it on their phone and tell you where it sounds like a machine.
6. Fix what they flag, then read it once more on a phone, in that language, tapping every button.

What to say when you ask a customer to proofread. "You've been coming here for years, and you speak [language] better than any translator I can afford. Would you read our new [language] page on your phone and tell me anything that sounds off or wrong? Ten minutes, and your next [haircut / oil change / cleaning] is on me." Most people are flattered, and the ones who say yes become your best word of mouth in that community.

What to ask any agency, including us. "Is each language a separate page with its own address? Does a person check the translation, or only a machine? Who reads the numbers? What happens when I change a price, and does that cost extra per language?" Our answer to the last one: it's one change on the monthly plan, applied to every language, not five.

A worked example: what a second language is worth

Made-up numbers, so you can put in your own. Say a veterinary clinic on the edge of Brighton Beach serves 120 customers a week. The tally sheet shows about 40 of them prefer Russian, and staff say most Russian-speaking first-timers come by word of mouth or from walking past, almost never from the website, because the website is English only.

Now say the clinic adds a Russian page, properly built so it shows up when people search in Russian. Suppose it brings in just three new Russian-speaking customers a week who would otherwise have picked a clinic with a Russian sign. At $45 a visit, that's 3 × $45 = $135 a week, or about $7,020 a year. If a third of them become regulars who come back every three weeks, about 17 visits a year each, the number keeps growing in year two.

Compare that with the cost. All fourteen languages are inside the plan; there is no charge per language and never was a good reason for one. The first year is $1,200 to set up plus $5,988 on Essential, so $7,188. Put your own numbers against it: your tally of second-language customers, what one is worth to you across a year, and a conservative guess at how many more would call if the page were in their language. The arithmetic is the same for a mechanic with Spanish-speaking customers or a dentist near a Georgian church. If it does not clear $7,188, do not buy it.

Translated pages appear in searches your competitors don't even know are happening.

Language beyond the website

The site is one door. Once you know your languages, put them on the others too, in this order.

• Google Business Profile. Add a line to the description: "We speak English, Spanish, and Russian." Reply to reviews in the language they were written in. Our profile guide shows where each field is.
• Voicemail. Record the greeting in English, then repeat the key line in your second language: "Leave your name and number and we'll call you back."
• The window. A small "Se habla español" or "Говорим по-русски" sticker costs almost nothing and does for people walking past what the site does for people searching.
• Text messages. If you text appointment reminders, send them in the customer's language. Ask once at booking and note it.
• Bots. A Website Bot that answers questions in five languages, a Call Bot that picks up in the caller's language when you're with a customer, or a Voice Bot for bookings. They run on the same AI that does our translation, put on the phone line. They're priced separately, and the AI's usage cost is passed to you at cost, with no markup.

Every site we build can ship in English, Spanish, Georgian, Russian, and Ukrainian. Not because five is a magic number, but because we're from this neighborhood and we know who lives here. If your count says you need two of them, we build two and leave the switch clean. The monthly plan includes them; the monthly plan keeps all versions in sync when your prices change.

Common mistakes and the fix for each

• Translating only the homepage. The customer switches to Spanish, clicks Services, and lands back in English. Fix: translate every page a customer can reach, or don't offer the language yet.
• Trusting the machine alone. A page that reads like "we cut the hairs of the gentlemen". Fix: one native reader per language, every time, before launch.
• Different prices in different languages. Usually because one version was updated and the others weren't. Fix: every price change goes to every language the same day. Put it in the monthly plan's change request as one item.
• Flags with no language name. A Mexican customer looking for a Spanish flag, a Ukrainian speaker offended by the wrong one. Fix: write the language's own name in its own alphabet in the switch, with or without a flag beside it.
• Offering a language nobody in the shop speaks. The page brings the customer; the phone call loses them. Fix: list only languages you can serve, and say who speaks what.
• Mixing languages on one page. Russian heading, English buttons, Spanish footer. Fix: each language version is complete on its own, including the small text.

Your checklist

• One week of tally counts by the register and on the phone.
• Languages I can actually serve, and who speaks them, written down.
• Each language on its own page address (/es/, /ru/, and so on).
• Language switch in each language's own name on every page.
• Every page translated, including buttons, forms, and thank-you messages.
• Prices, hours, phone, address identical in every version.
• Numbers checked by eye against the English.
• One native speaker has read each language on a phone.
• "We speak..." sentence on the site and the Google profile.
• Voicemail greeting includes the second language.
• A process for updating all versions when a price changes.

Questions owners ask

Isn't Google's automatic translation good enough now? For a customer who finds your English page and clicks "translate", it helps. But it doesn't get your page found by someone searching in Russian, and the buttons, forms, and prices often come through wrong. It's a backup, not a strategy.

Will translated pages hurt my English ranking? No, when they're built properly as separate pages with the language tag. Each version competes for searches in its own language. Done wrong, as duplicate content or an on-the-fly widget, they do nothing for search either way.

Which of the five should I start with? The one your tally sheet says. In south Brooklyn that is often Russian; in Queens or Union City it is more likely Spanish. Start with one, get it right, add the next when the count justifies it.

My English isn't perfect either. Does that matter? Only in that the English version should be written well first, since every translation starts from it. That's why we write every word ourselves when we build a site: we sit with you, listen to how you describe your work, and write it in plain English before it goes into any other language.

Do I need to translate my Google reviews or my social posts? Reviews, no; reply in the language they're written in. Posts, only if you're posting for that audience. The site and the profile description are the two places where a second language pays for itself first.